Джо Горес - Come Morning

“I’m hungry,” she said.

“In fact, I can’t really remember when I haven’t been hungry.” She dropped the empty oyster shell on the bed of cracked ice, selected another, slurped, chewed, licked the juice from the corner of her mouth as he watched her in awe. “Better have some before I eat them all.”

“You already have.” He leaned forward. “Your old man doesn’t own a liquor store, does he?”

“He manages the Osco Drug in Rochester, Minnesota. Why?”

“The Marine’s dream — the deaf-and-dumb nympho whose old man owns a liquor store—”

“So that’s how I strike you.”

“Rochester, Minnesota,” he said musingly. “Don’t they have the Mayo Clinic there?”

“Runs the town.”

As she spoke, a vivid memory rushed back upon her. She could smell the sharp tang of green apples, feel her T-shirt cling to her bony adolescent back with evaporated sweat, rough bark under her hands, the shock and sting in her feet when she dropped to the ground and darted into the bushes lining the fieldstone drywall at Mayowood. The guard’s flashlight bouncing and probing unsuccessfully through the orchard.

“The Mayos had a big estate a couple of miles out of town when I was a kid, we used to ride out there on our bikes and steal apples.”

“What happened if you got caught? They’d take out your appendix?”

She laughed and shook her head. “I never got caught.”

“Were you scared?”

“Petrified. But it was such a delicious feeling.”

“I’ve never been so scared as this last month, waiting to get out,” he said, surprising her; she had thought so much openness was impossible for him. “You get scared of freedom. Every con who’s served a few years without getting killed or turning queer has learned how to survive inside. You run a couple of bluffs, you get your Levi’s pressed and your shoes shined and wear a fancy belt and buckle. You’re a big man. But in the process you let yourself get defined by the place. When you finally make parole, you start getting scared you won’t be able to make it on the outside.”

“You want them to have stopped the world while you got off?”

“Or at least slow it down so I can jump back on. But they don’t.” He squeezed her hand. “You. The way you are. Maybe there were women like you around when I went inside, but I never knew any of them. I don’t know how to handle someone like you.” His tone changed, tightened; his eyes caught hers and held them. “I wanted it to be simple when I got out. So I could be out — not carrying prison around on my back. Nothing coming at me. But you’re coming at me. You—”

“Runyan, you don’t have to—”

“Of course I do. You make me feel...” He paused. His voice was intense, slightly hoarse. “You turn me around. I’ve got to handle that. Moyers is staked out on Beach Street, waiting for me to make my move. I’ve got to handle that, too. Last night I got a phone call that means I’m going to have to get out of this hotel tonight without being seen. All of a sudden my options are limited. If Moyers finds out I’m going...”

“Take my car,” she said. Her smile was stunning, full of devilish delight. “I’ll take care of Moyers. Moyers will never know what hit him.”

Moyers was parked in the first space next to the fire hydrant on Beach just off Mason. The garage entrance was across the street, the exit was centered in his rear-view mirror, and by turning his head he could see down the cobbled alley to the hotel entrance. If they tried to leave, he’d have them nailed.

Slouched behind the wheel of the Datsun, he wondered if they were up in her room right now, doing it again. Almost eidetic images of the woman, nude, in various abandoned positions upon the bed, flashed through his mind: In each of them, Moyers, bare-assed and shlong at the ready, was about to perform upon her whatever sexual act her particular position seemed to encourage.

He forced his mind away, to himself before the parole board, saying the things that had gotten Runyan out of San Quentin. Brilliant.

“I believe he knows where those diamonds are, and I believe he will try to recover them shortly after his release. In doing so, he will violate the terms of his parole. He will be returned to San Quentin, Homelife General will make recovery, and the interests and aims of society will have been served...”

Louise Graham opened the off-side door, slid in beside him, and slammed it. She wore a clinging soft grey wool dress which, without displaying anything, suggested everything.

“You have any coffee?” she asked. “It’s freezing out and I left my coat up in the room.”

Moyers forced himself to look away from her body while he considered the problems her presence suggested. He shot a quick look at the entrance and his rear-view mirror, then reached down for the Thermos, a deliberately sleepy look on his face.

“I hope you left Runyan up in the room too.”

She eyed the coffee greedily. “Dead to the world.”

He gave a coarse laugh as he unscrewed the top of the Thermos. “Fucked himself to sleep, huh? After all these years without any.”

“Oh goody,” she said tonelessly. “It knows how to talk dirty. I was so afraid it wouldn’t.” She held out the plastic cup from the Thermos and he poured steaming coffee into it.

Okay, nothing cheap about her. Brains and sensitivities to match her looks. Which made her more dangerous. Why had she come here? Probably to try and pump him about Runyan. Or about himself; he could be a factor in the equation she hadn’t expected. She could be as curious about his role as he was about hers. He switched tacks.

“Runyan tells me that you’re a writer.”

She nodded. “Louise Graham.” She slurped coffee and made a face. “Vile but hot.”

“Moose-shit pie — but good!”

She surprised him with a husky laugh that affected him like her languid fingernails running up his spine.

“Don’t try so hard to shock me. I started out doing newspaper obits; you ever listen to the jokes undertakers tell between cadavers?”

She started to take another drink of her coffee, bumped her elbow on the door handle, and cascaded hot coffee into her lap.

“Ouch!” she yelled. “Damn! ”

Moyers snatched out his handkerchief and sopped at the spill, his fingers almost greedy in their movements. Before she pushed his hand away, he had felt the firm twin curves of her inner thighs coming together, had brushed the mound of her pudendum even through the wet wool of her skirt.

“Thanks,” she said coldly. “I can manage.”

Moyers belatedly looked down the alleyway to the hotel entrance, checked the garage exit in the rear-view mirror. Nothing moving either place. With her coffee spill, Louise had given Runyan just enough time to whip the Lynx out of the garage exit and around the corner, out of sight. Her ruined skirt apparently forgotten, she plucked a box of Winchell’s doughnuts from the dashboard.

“Any of these left? I’m starving to death.”

Moyers doubted that, having observed them in the hotel dining room, but he wasn’t going to argue. He had to get as much as he could from her about Runyan’s plans without letting her know what he was doing. It wouldn’t be too tough: She was bright enough, but he was a professional.

“So,” he said, “you must have come out here for more than my doughnuts.”

“Don’t bet on it,” she said, biting into a sugar glaze. “Newspeople are the world’s original freeloaders.”

Runyan stopped just beyond the wide concrete apron and, by the light of the streetlamp 30 yards down the alley, looked across the car at the street loading door.